


Renascence

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Birthdays, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Post-Credits Scene, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Feels, Stupid Boys Who Take All The Stupid With Them, Supersoldiers in Love, Wakanda, Welcome to the Vibranium Capital of the World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-30 18:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11468937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: When they tell him, he freezes. Steve feels his bones seize and his blood go cold and slow and snag on spears of ice that catch, that flay him alive.We’re in the final phases, Captain. He'll wake within the month if we’re lucky.And it's silly, it’s childish, it’s horrible of him to eventhinkbut—Even a month from just now, will miss it entirely. And Bucky will pass a hundred years on earth, of or against his own will, with his eyes closed in the cold.





	Renascence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weepingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/gifts).



> As a birthday present for [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), this was already going to be overdue by a touch, but I sent it her way nonetheless: a private sort of giftfic for one of my most favourite people in the universe. I hadn't planned on posting it.
> 
> She read it, however, and rather demanded it be shared. So by that point, it was far past Bucky's (and her) birthday, and I was pondering a July 4 ficlet, and I thought, well.
> 
> Steve's month. Bucky's date. Sounds fine.
> 
>    
> While the fic itself will probably date on Ao3 as the 11th if I'm lucky, or the 12th if I'm not because I'm criss-crossing timezones like crazy, but whatever. Again: fine. Ish.

When they tell him, he freezes. He feels his bones seize and his blood go cold and slow and snag on spears of ice that catch, that flay him alive.

He freezes, and the only thing about him with any kind of motion is his heart, which doesn’t pound so much as thrash: violent, wild—lost, but aching something fierce to just be found again.

When they tell him, he nods, says nothing, and turns on his heel

 _We’re in the final trial phases, Captain. Within the month if we’re lucky._.

It’s the most treacherous, most unacceptable and indefensible thing in the world that lets him meet that promise of another miracle he didn’t earn and doesn’t deserve with coldness, with something far too near to _disdain_ : it’s hopeless, and it’s vile, and it’s selfish to extents that even _Steve’s_ never touched before, and he’s known his share of selfish, not least when it comes to this.

To _Bucky_.

It’s silly, it’s childish, it’s horrible of him to even _think_ but—

Even a month—and what’s a _month_ , really, but more: what’s a month for him, for _them_ ; but even a month, on the _inside_ —even a month from just now, will miss it entirely.

And Bucky will pass a hundred years on earth, of or against his own will, with his eyes closed in the cold.

And as simple, as quiet and unassuming as that is against everything, _everything_ else and worse, Steve can’t help it. Steve can’t _stand_ it.

He breaks things in his rooms that T’Challa may not forgive him for, but as he shakes on the bed in his quarters, uncontrollably, he doesn’t know if he has it in him still to care.

_______________________

 

Later that same day, he’s sent for. He’s sent for with kindness, with understanding and respect he may not deserve but he leaps to take it when the doctor overseeing Bucky’s treatment meets him in the antechamber of the medical suite.

“All tests have cleared as best we can assure without administering the treatment directly,” she tells him without prevarication; Steve likes that about her. She doesn’t mince words. “As you know, Sergeant Major Barnes signed directives, and you are his medical proxy.”

Steve nods; he’s still thrown by the rank in front of Bucky’s name, but the doctor is a stickler for accuracy, which Steve’s grateful for, and protocol, which Steve’s grateful for, in theory. When not applied to himself. She’d been very keen to assign Bucky the appropriate designation—regardless of the likely opinions of the U.S. military—based on experience and service alongside time spent as a prisoner of war, and Steve doesn’t like to think about that, about prisoners and war and those terms not even scraping the surface of what they did to Bucky, so Steve focuses on the other part for his own self-preservation in the moment, with people around—and Steve doesn’t know if any of the ranking’s _right_ , mind, plus S.H.I.E.L.D. did things in their own strange way, really, and Steve’s kind of just a Captain by design, so.

He’ll trust the doctor, if any of it even matters.

Save that nothing matters, anymore. Except the heart in Steve’s chest, frozen through longer than it’s ever been allowed to beat.

Whether he himself was on ice or not.

 _Fuck_.

It takes him a minute to realise she’s been talking, and has narrowed her eyes at him in sharp askance as he snaps back to the present.

“To confirm,” the doctor says slowly, and Steve knows she’s had to have repeated herself more than once, now. “You consent, in absence of his ability to consent himself, to move forward?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent,” she nods, and beckons him to follow her as she walks, stately and with purpose through the medical wing. “I feel compelled to ensure that you understand we’ll begin with the drug regimen now.” She glances meaningfully at Steve; he’d been leery of it, after everything they’d pumped Bucky through with; leery and fearful and heartbroken to Bucky’s desperate _hope_ and conviction that what he was, is, was _wrong_. 

“He’s been safely removed from cryostasis and we are slowly reacclimating his system,” the doctor continues, turning and leading the way onward when Steve doesn’t protest. “I do not wish to provide you with a false sense of timing, Captain. This may take days, or in itself it may take months. I will approach this as I would with an unaltered human genome, you understand,” she eyes him critically. “Your enhanced physiology is impressive, but we do not know enough of it for precision, and thus I err on the side of caution.” 

“Of course,” Steve nods, a bit hollow, a bit aching, and wholly hoping that what he thinks comes at the end of this walk is what’s there. “Yeah, of course.”

She stops and turns. There’s a door behind her. Steve’s heart’s hammering, made of steel, cracking ribs. 

Steve can’t breathe.

“He’s unconscious, and will be kept so,” Steve bristles, but she sees too quickly for him to hide it, but he’s grateful, because that means she counters his fears without missing a beat.

“We will not rouse him to the point of wakefulness until we are certain of his physiological functioning, and the effectiveness of the preliminary neurorestructuring we will administer in the process. Naturally, that alone will slow things. He will likely be unresponsive, from your standpoint, for some time yet, even given the serum. Around a month, at the least, as I believe you were informed,” the doctor warns. 

“Though in my professional opinion, I think longer is more probable. It was more taxing than we originally projected,” Steve’s breath, that he can’t seem to take, catches sharp. “Though not damaging,” she’s quick to reassure, seeing his dismay, the trip in his thrashing pulse. “He’s been exhausted, not done harm. That I promise you, Captain.”

“I,” Steve rasps, unmade and remade and unmade again in just moments, with just a few simple words.

“Thank you.”

It’s all he can say.

The doctor studies him carefully before watching him, asking wordless permission to take his hand, to give him a touchstone, and lead him through the doors.

The view through the glass that awaits along his left is a fist around his heart, stopping it still and sudden, and it hurts, but goddamn.

God _damn_ , that fist is so _warm_.

“You may sit with him, as you desire,” the doctor tells him softly as he stares, unblinking, at the still form of the man he’s loved as long as he can remember, pale under lush sheets but his chest is rising under them, and the image Steve’d feared isn’t realized in whole: no wires, no tubes or beeping machines—thank god, again, for Wakandan technology.

It just looks like he’s sleeping. Like Steve could crawl in and tuck his head under Bucky’s chin and just, just—

“I suspect my people will oppose your presence without sufficient safety protocols come the time to test the success of the procedure in practice, once he is recovered enough,” the doctor tells him; “but if being with him might—”

“Yes,” Steve says, trips over his own tongue and turns to her with wide eyes, heart in his throat now, near vibrating for the need in it to be closer, closer; to know that Bucky’s _there_ ; “yes, please, I—”

“Come.” The doctor’s hand is on his again, her eyes warm now, her lips in a soft hint of a smile. “We’ll find you a comfortable chair.”

And Steve thinks, maybe, if the world could end and start all at once?

It does just that when the door to the room opens, and the first thing Steve hears is the way that Bucky _breathes_.

_______________________

Steve sits with him, and hours lose meaning, long after days have started to blend, and Steve thinks that he belongs here. He’d forgotten what belonging was, for so long, that he’d begun to think he was simply an anachronism. A man out of time. But no.

No: Steve Rogers belongs when he’s next to Bucky, because next to Bucky is the shape his soul was always meant to settled inside and love and breathe and _be_ for. So Steve sits with him.

Steve sits with him, more often than not.

And when one of the nurses convinces him to leave for a time—more strong-arms him, really, brooking no argument when he demands that Steve leave now for bathing and rest, lest he bar him entirely from Bucky’s room forthwith—Steve drags himself mournfully to his quarters, forcing himself to focus on the promise of the physician that Bucky would not wake in his absence, not yet. Steve wishes he _would_ wake, of course, but if Steve can’t be next to him, hand in his, clear and unquestionable reassurance that Bucky is not alone, that he is safe, that he is loved beyond reason—

Well. If Bucky were to wake in the time Steve would be gone, Steve doesn’t know what he’d do, really.

But when Steve enters his quarters for the first time since he ran there like a coward, like a petulant child in a tantrum, in such deep mourning it pushed out first in rage, the former evidence of his wrath in broken glass and splintered wood is all but erased without a single trace. He stares at the wholly restored serenity of his surroundings and maybe it’s the culmination of everything, maybe it’s the sheer _goodness_ in his hosts, and their impossible tendency to forgive, Steve doesn’t know precisely what it is, in honesty.

But he sobs on the bed and sleeps for countless hours. He asks immediately upon waking, suddenly alert and nearly vibrating with fear that he’s slept _too_ long, whether Bucky’s come-to, but it’s fine, Bucky’s fine, and beginning to show signs of comfortable rest, of coming out the other side rather than remaining still for reasons beyond touching, beyond wishing those eyes open just yet.

Steve showers with the speed the military pressed into his muscles, thoughtless save for that single promise, that perfect dream.

Bucky’s eyes open. Bucky’s eyes on _Steve_.

If Steve palms himself and comes apart under the spray for the mere thought, the soft imagining alone, then it’s no surprise.

He’s in love, and has been so long he hadn’t needed to think about it for years, on ice or off.

It’s just what makes his heart beat, really. It’s just what his blood’s made of at the core.

And so he walks back to Bucky’s room with a new sense of foolish, aching _hope_ , shaded in the perfect silver-skychange of those endless, heartbreaking eyes, and Steve just thinks: _maybe today_. His pulse pumps those words over and again.

And if not today, then maybe tomorrow.

Steve can wait forever, if he needs to. Gladly, so long as those eyes are at the end.

_______________________

It’s not today, of course. Or tomorrow. Steve knows that it’ll hurt more to even think of either with too much hope—too soon, too _soon_ but so far, and they’ve _waited_ —but it’s not today. And Steve knows it won’t be for a good long while.

And The Day Of, when it comes: of course that’s not _the_ day, either. 

So Steve does what Steve’s done every year he’s passed without Bucky there to celebrate—he relives the best memories until his chest hurts, until he trembles like he deserves because he lived when he wasn’t supposed to, and Bucky, well.

Bucky met the fate worse than death that was supposed to be a myth, a figure of speech. Bucky met the thing that people can’t imagine, so they say in the place of the unimaginable.

On the day of, Steve makes himself remember what used to be, forces himself to lie in bed and remember the shape, the heat around him like a whisper and a ghost and a promise in the dark where it was forbidden, where it was a secret, where it was the only thing that pumped through Steve’s heart like it was supposed to, like that’s what he was made for. 

Steve makes himself remember their first kiss—stolen, scared odd-angled and terrifying but the best thing Steve’d ever known when they pulled apart and Bucky’s eyes were wide and honest and _wanted_ and Steve’s blood had sang with the very idea of maybe, just _maybe_. 

Steve makes himself remember their first time—heated, too hard and too fast and everything Steve had ever wanted as he bit hard into Bucky’s shoulder to keep from moaning, from screaming, from coming apart and never finding home again except this was home, with Bucky against him, inside him, and he’d never need to look again. 

Steve makes himself remember finding Bucky, that first night: holding him so close and Bucky so wooden, so lost and Steve hurting for him, hating himself for not being strong enough, quick enough, good enough to stop it and in the now, he should have known that for all that Bucky looked starved and shaken to the core, his muscles were too defined.

He should have _known_.

And then there’s the now, as if Steve couldn’t make this worse, couldn’t _do_ any _worse_ and fail Bucky any _more_ ; there’s the now, where Steve’s hiding, wallowing on his own, in his rooms when he should be at Bucky’s side because what if he wakes up? Just another thing Steve could never forgive, good _god_ , and they’d promised, all the doctors and nurses and techs had promised at the first sign of Bucky waking he’d be called in immediately, they’d _promised_ , and Ramona—Bucky’s head physician, ever practical and level headed in the face of Steve’s endless fretting—had told him plainly that Bucky would not be waking for many days yet, given his readings and their research, and Steve trusts her. He does.

Except—

“Captain.”

The knock on the door to his rooms is soft, as is the voice beyond them. Steve’s been lying in the dark, reliving the best and worst moments of his life and his stomach is still in a freefall for the memories of a train in the snow. He’s unsteady but he leaps, heart in his throat because what if, what if _Bucky_ —

He tears the door open and seems to startle the young man behind it, and it’s only in retrospect that Steve realizes they’d have beckoned him via call or comm, rather than sending someone to his door.

“Captain,” the young main repeats to Steve’s face, and his own expression is troubled. “They’ve asked, and I’m meant to, but I don’t think this,” and his eyes flicker, and Steve notices a serving cart to the side along the wall. 

“I just,” he frowns, and Steve can see the bloodline in the twist of his features, however far removed this prince is from the throne. “He was insistent, you understand. He left instructions before he…”

If Steve’s stomach wasn’t plummeting before, it certainly is now. If Steve had any doubt who _he_ was, there’s no denying it; it’s clear as day.

“But it’s not particularly, I mean, it may be a bit,” the prince swallows hard before meeting Steve’s eyes. “ _Insensitive_.”

Steve could do a number of things, in that moment. He chooses not to fall apart, at the very least.

Or else, not just then. Not yet.

“Well,” Steve snorts, and tries to make the way he leans against the doorframe seem casual, rather than essential for the way his knees are going to give way any minute because there are two days in Steve’s life that threaten to end him, and standing tall for any one of them is a trial, and hell if he isn’t pushing his ability to _be_ , just now.

“I guess if I had any doubt about it being what he wanted,” Steve forces himself to say, tries to make a smirk out of a grimace. “That’d certainly clear up any questions.”

After all: Bucky was never much for conventional _sensitivity_ , the jerk.

Steve watches as the young man dithers, uncertain still, and Steve wracks his brain for the man’s name—Steve kicks himself for _having_ to wrack his brain, for being so inconsiderate, so self-absorbed to have _forgotten_ —

“Jakarra.” Steve’s pretty sure that’s right, and the man looks up quickly enough that it seems as much, and Steve tries to smile. “It’s fine, I promise.”

Steve doesn’t know that for sure, obviously; in fact what he knows is just the opposite. It’s not fine. Nothing’s fine. And when Jakarra hands him a cloched plate, Steve can only wonder and listen to the heavy thump in his ears, in his chest as he takes it in hands he’s only just able to keep from trembling as he says thank you, gets a nod, and retreats.

He only just gets the plate to a table, dropping it there with a clang as he starts to lose his grasp on the grief that roils in him, always so much more like chaos. Now.

It takes him too many minutes to find, to catch his breath. And when he does, it takes too many minutes to convince himself to lift the cover of the plate delivered and see whatever’s underneath.

 _Those tights of yours got you by the balls, Stevie?_ the voice in his head from a lifetime again, from the goddamn chambers of his heart in the now rings tight in his ears. _You’re the Star-Spangled Man, so Star-Spangled Man-up._

Steve bites his lip and lifts the cover on the plate, tosses it aside like it’s on fire, like it’s lethal, like it’ll eat him alive.

“Oh my god.”

And there is it. Small, compared to the plating. Simple, for the formal presentation. And for both of those things, it shouldn’t build up Steve’s chest, his throat—shouldn’t burst out with a choked sob that tries to be a laugh and ends up spilling from his eyes as everything, _everything_ comes out at the sight, the scent, the single slice of motherfucking _apple pie_.

And it takes Steve back, so far back to every one of Bucky’s birthdays. To every time Bucky’s ma made sure to make Bucky’s favorite treat, an apple pie bigger than Bucky’s own face, let alone Steve’s and it was only years later that Steve realized it: Bucky’ll eat it, but he mostly hates apple pie.

Steve, though—not that he’d admit it to anyone in the now—but Steve?

Apple pie is Steve’s _favorite_.

“Oh my god, you asshole,” Steve whispers to the empty room, because only Bucky would have thought of his birthday when he was about to go back on ice. Only Bucky would have thought of _Steve_ when he thought of it at all.

And only _Bucky_ would have made a point like this: affection and recollection and devotion and a little bit of cheek and fuck, _fuck_ —

“You fucking _asshole_.”

And Steve can’t stomach this, any of this, but not to touch the offering, to reject what it stands for and means seems like a sin, so Steve makes himself eat it, all ash in his mouth before he collapses on the bed again and falls the rest of the way apart.

“Come back,” he whispers into the pillow, into nothing. “Please just,” and he chokes on the words, on everything in his chest and in his lungs and pressing tight from the inside where Steve needs, _needs_ arms, hands around him again to press tight _everywhere_ and keep him intact:

“Please come _back_.”

_______________________

The day after, and the day after that: Steve barely touches any food.

He doesn’t even _look_ at a fucking apple.

_______________________

Easter comes, and goes. Steve thinks of churches in Brooklyn, and their best Sunday clothes, and Bucky trying to get him to laugh in the middle of service because Bucky was just that much of an asshole, just that much the best thing in his life, from the very first.

Memorial Day, Steve only remembers because he remembers how he felt about it keenly, before and after. So quick and proud and dedicated to remembering and respecting the sacrifices made by others that he couldn’t make himself, and then: understanding that sometimes, every day was a memorial, a space for mourning, and the calendar did fuck all to soothe or stop it.

Steve does hold Bucky’s warm-but-motionless hand tighter, that particular Monday. Counts his pulse to remind himself that maybe he can stop mourning so much, some day in a future he can see.

Maybe. 

So time marches on, and if Steve though the days were fluid before then hell: Steve’s grateful they do something more than just wash together, now: he doesn’t know if he could get up in the morning if he didn’t simply startle awake by a technician monitoring the steady administration of Bucky’s medications and serums— _all for the better_ , Steve assured; _have patience_ , Captain, he’s soothed, or admonished; he isn’t sure. He doesn’t care.

But if he didn’t wake with his head neck to Bucky’s hand, still but smooth against soft sheets, Steve doesn’t know what the hell he’d do.

“Captain Rogers?”

Bucky’s head physician, Ramona, doesn’t knock on the open door, simply slides in with impossible grace, already knowing Steve won’t refuse her.

“Doctor,” Steve greets her with a nod, but doesn’t attempt a smile. He’s been watching Bucky, as is the norm, now—blessedly, they’d give up trying to stop him—and the places he’s been going in his head don’t lend him so much as a quirk of the his lips, just now. 

“How are you?” she asks, sitting at Bucky’s opposite side, back straight and eyes shrewd, but not wholly unwelcoming. 

“I’m,” Steve starts, but he doesn’t know where to go next and normally that wouldn’t bother him, wouldn’t stop him, but here it’s too big, too much. He shakes his head. 

“Fine,” he decides on, because it’s as good or bad, false or true as anything else. He leans back and nods to Bucky’s prone frame. “How’s _he_ doing?”

“Mmm,” the doctor eyes him, brows lifting as she doesn’t so much as falter in her gaze not on Bucky, not on her patient: but on Steve. 

“Try again,” she instructs him, slow and clear. “How _are_ you, Captain?”

And he’s a superhero, or so people tell him. A grown man, for whatever that’s worth. But for all he’s never known how to pick his battles?

He knows not to fight the gaze leveled at him, just now. 

“I’m,” he swallows, and it’s difficult, painful; tight. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know how, or don’t know the words?” Ramona’s voice is clipped but kind, somehow. An enigma, just another thing Steve can’t understand. 

“Either,” Steve huffs a breath, though nothing like a laugh. “Probably more the,” his voice cracks and he swallows again: “The words.”

“Mmm.” And Ramona leaves it at that. And it’s okay.

It’s not okay, but it’s...okay. 

It’s something. Steve doesn’t know what.

“We’re seeing significant changes in his biorhythms.” 

She says it from nowhere, reporting facts as if they’re innocuous when they pound against his heart, rather than through it, in it—agony and hope.

“Is that,” Steve stumbles on his words, trembles in his skin and grips Bucky’s hand in his own all the harder, all the tighter. “Is he okay, I mean, is something—”

“Peace, Captain,” Ramona murmurs, the same careful command in that voice again, and Steve’s heart doesn’t settle, exactly, but there’s a thread of calm that threads through. 

“They are very encouraging changes. He is a model patient, and as,” she tilts her head, eyes darting between Bucky and himself; “as much of a _specimen_ as you are yourself,” she decides on the word; “despite the differences in the formulas that rendered you as such.” 

Steve, in another time and place, would have snorted—a _specimen_. That might be the best word anyone’s ever used.

“But I believe that he will wake soon,” she says: again, innocuous when she’s shaking Steve's world at its roots. 

“I know you have been told ‘soon’ before,” she amends quickly, with an arched brow and a careful nod; “within the coming weeks, so perhaps not _soon_ by your standards, but.”

Steve bites his tongue. _But_ , indeed.

“Given our predictive models and his progress so far? My opinion is in seven days, optimistically,” she eyes Bucky consideringly. “Nearer twenty conservatively.”

And _but_. But _soon_.

Steve’s tongue gets caught on the heart that leaps up too high and thrashes too hard, daring—fucking _daring_ to hope again, to leap again, to throw itself on a fucking pyre and pray again because, because….

“He’ll,” Steve whispers, eyes staring hard at Bucky’s rising chest, losing focus on the fall because days, _days_ — 

“He’ll, I—”

“Captain.” 

Steve’s lungs feel heavy, needing something better to breathe in. His world feels broken; waiting on the brink of being remade. And he thought he’d known what that felt like in the confines of a vita-ray chamber, but that was nothing.

Breaking bones and growing cells in the blink of an eye was _nothing_ , compared to what Steve feels starting to shiver through his veins.

“I,” Steve says, or thinks he says. It might just be a sound. It might just be all that he can do or think or say in the liminal space, in the melee between what’s been, and what was found to lose: and what _might be_.

 _Soon_.

He feels dizzy. He thinks he probably wouldn’t manage to stay standing if he tried. He must look it, too, because the doctor is standing instead, crossing to him in her fluid, feline poise and leaning on the empty corner of the bed to level with Steve where he sits, reading his face before taking his hands in her own.

“I do not anticipate any complications,” Ramona looks him straight in the eyes, her touch grounding him, unwavering, and he thinks of his mother, just then. Feels small and young and afraid without anger to hold him in. “But should they come, we are prepared.”

Steve nods. He keeps nodding, like he can’t actually stop himself.

He’s adrift. He feels the doctor’s hands tighten.

He holds an inhale for a long moment just to catch the wisp of Bucky’s breath and grasp it, latch onto it and hold.

“He will need a few days to acclimate before we move forward with the final stages of the procedure,” Ramona speaks, and her tone is changed: her syllables are measured, almost lulling. Rhythmic. “But we have been using the feedback from his tests and the monitoring we’ve been able to compare before the cryo procedure, while in stasis through to now, and the data trends toward very promising results already, given what we can see from the regimen we’ve placed him on.” 

Steve nods again. Steve listens to Bucky’s breathing and nods every time his chest falls with it.

“I would never endorse a procedure I did not believe in,” Ramona tells him with purpose, folding his hands against themselves before covering them almost protectively with her own and Steve wants to cry, because there’s only one person he knows who protects him, and he’s lying next to them, and _god_ —

“But Captain,” Ramona anchors him again, and Steve meets her gaze as it measure him with urgency, with absolute intent: “My confidence in this course has only increased over the past weeks, and monumentally so.”

“You,” Steve’s mouth is dry, and his voice cracks hard. “He’ll,” Steve’s eyes drift to his side, where he thinks, if he were to be honest enough with himself and quiet enough to know it, he’d find his own heart was the one beating beneath the sheets of that bed and so it hurts, but beautifully, when he says the next words like a a statement, a fact rather than a question, even as he knows his eyes are asking:

“He’ll be awake.”

Ramona nods, and clasps his hands again: a reassurance.

“Yes.”

“And you can,” Steve licks his lips, because he needs Bucky to wake, he _needs_ that but he knows that’s not it; not all. 

Not even close.

“He’ll, you can help…”

Ramona cuts in quick, saves him from floundering further.

“I have long passed the point of foolishness when it comes to making guarantees,” she tells him frankly. “But I swear to you, Captain, we have done everything in our power, and we will continue to do the same,” her lips quirk a little, her eyes smiling more than her mouth when she adds:

“And I do not exaggerate when I say we are the very best at what we do.” 

Steve exhales something that might be a chuckle, soon— _but_ ; it might be a chuckle, or hell, it could be joy when the world finds its footing again, when the air comes back and those eyes open and Steve can feel his heartbeat without the snag of catching on something sharp, something broken.

“I have very high hopes,” Ramona says as she stands; “and very minimal concerns.”

She moves to leave, and Steve immediately moves closer to the bed, close enough that he can start to feel the heat of Bucky’s body before he turns:

“Ramona.”

She pauses, hand at the door. 

“Thank you.”

It’s not enough, but of all the brilliant women he’s know he’s never met someone like her, so.

He hopes she understands what he means.

_______________________

In the end: it’s a conservative estimate. In the end, it takes time.

And maybe that’s why it caught him so unawares, had him on tenterhooks that much tighter, that much more jagged to tear the past days, hours, minutes to heartbeats that pushed between seconds for how strung tight Steve was, is: waiting. 

Steve had thought they were over all the slow parts, the frozen moments, the bits where they looked but couldn’t, didn’t touch. Steve hadn’t realized that there was still enough hope in him for something to move quick, and painless, and easy that wasn’t the siren call of the dark for him to be so hung up on it, so caught up in it that he can’t sleep, that he can’t hardly _breathe_ , tricking himself into seeing signs of waking, something, _anything_.

Or maybe it’s just that Steve’s waited for this without knowing it, every breath he’s taken without Bucky by his side. Maybe it’s just that Steve only realized, wholly, that he’d never come off the ice, not really, until he saw Bucky’s face. Maybe it’s that Steve wants to fucking breathe again, and he’s sick of being teased with it, taunted with it, and he wants to drown in those eyes and let go, knowing someone will catch him.

Maybe Steve’s selfish as fuck, and he wants the only thing, the only one who was ever _his_ , and who kept him in kind, to come _back_.

He’s got his head on folded arms, leaning against the bed—not white, not here, and more like a luxury suite than a hospital mattress, everything but the absolutely necessary tracked via sensors placed within the plush accommodations. Bucky doesn’t have to look pale against white; in fact, he’s mostly looked just soft against the rich chestnut shades of the linens. At least he’s comfortable, Steve’s been telling himself every few minutes when he starts to get lost in fear, or impatience, or mourning for something amorphous and not-quite-real; something in between everything he knows.

At least he’s comfortable, Steve thinks now, as he counts the threads in the fabric, close enough for his enhanced vision to make it almost possible, like fingers teasing the hairs on his head in the dim light, sounds of the city around them as they breathe and breathe and—

The light’s dim, but there are no sounds, save for the breathing, the breathing, the breathing—

There are fingers carding through his hair. 

Steve is intimately familiar with the way a heart can struggle to beat, but goddamnit: he’s never felt it flat out _stop_ before.

He closes his eyes, and steels against the pain of the pounding of his blood that follows the shock, against the fear that he’s drifted off and dreaming, he breathes and he listens to the breathing and that’s about all he can manage until something else threads in.

“Stevie.”

And it’s soft, but fond. It’s low, but clear. It’s rough, but warm.

It’s near, and Steve prays it’s not a dream.

Steve sits up, reaching for the hand at his scalp as he does, making sure he can hold it, making sure the contact to some part of him is never broken as he dares to look, to turn.

A smile greets him.

“Hey,” Bucky whispers, and Steve’s ribs crack open for the feeling that’s let loose inside.

“Oh my god,” Steve pants, breathless for something he didn’t know he was running from or towards until this moment, when his touch at Bucky’s hand is finally grasped back again, and when breathing seems to fade into the background because finally there is _more_. “Oh my _god_.”

Bucky's grin widens just a little as he takes Steve in, and Steve thinks he might be shaking but Bucky doesn’t seem to care, and Steve reaches for his other hand and brings them to his lips and exhales like the world lives in that space and it’s finally come back to life after winter—and those eyes are dancing for him; those eyes.

Those eyes are everything and _more_.

“ _Hey_.”

_______________________

Ramona does not waver in her precision, her absolute devotion to the clearest sense of the ideal course for her patient, but she is neither dismissive of Bucky’s desire: he wants the procedure, quickly as possible. He wants to know where this stands, and what comes next, and while Steve understands, he wishes that they could have more time.

Just in case.

Where a chair would seem natural for it, no one even suggests it. Steve doesn’t want to know the kinds of tweaks and accommodations needed to ensure that the set-up that awaits Bucky is something closer to a chaise: languid and soft.

Steve doesn’t want to know; he just wants to be fucking grateful beyond his ability to say.

“I don’t,” Bucky starts, his body still close enough to Steve’s as they stand that Steve can feel every inhale for the brush of a chest against his arm. Bucky turns, and catches Steve’s gaze before he speaks:

“I don’t want you to have to see this.”

Steve’s not necessarily surprised, even if he’s struck wholly dumb in that moment. His tongue is heavy, his blood thick and his pulse feels like lead in the pumping and Steve doesn’t know how to meet that, doesn’t know.

He can feel it, almost, for how much weight it carried: he can feel his heart thump hard through his throat and force out the words.

“You,” Steve chokes, fighting the sting in his eyes, a perpetually lost battle when it comes to this, when it come to _them_. “I can’t,” and Steve finally looks up, and watches Bucky’s heart crack, which breaks Steve’s straight in two: watches the tears Steve fights reflect in Bucky’s gaze as they fall.

“Please don’t make me go away,” Steve barely breathes, everything too tight, stretched too thin, asked to hold too much. Steve is reduced, stripped down to a figment, a fragment. Steve is wholly need and the battered, deathless love that keeps him standing, for better or for worse.

“ _Please_.” And Steve has to look away again as he pleads it, because he’s not strong enough. The only thing he knows that’s strong enough is all Bucky, what he feels for _Bucky_ and the places that live in him are so worn, just now, they don’t deserve it. Can’t hold it all in concert so as to make _Steve_ strong enough to bear up and _be_.

“Steve.”

And Bucky, because he’s Bucky: Bucky sees it and understands. Bucky knows it, and doesn’t question. Bucky grasps Steve’s arms tight, and carries his weight when Bucky should be the one seeking solace and refuge, and Steve should be enough to give it: but Steve didn’t see how much he was aching, how close to the edge he’d really been until he started to tumble, and maybe that’s the point.

Maybe he was only ever going to break once he knew, on some subconscious level only held tight by his soul: maybe steve was only ever going to be _able_ to break if he had someone to catch the pieces and keep them until he could be fit together again once more.

Until _they_ could be fit together again: the pieces Steve’s been missing that have left him unbalanced, unsteady, unmeasured. That have tripped him up and made him hard where he’s scabbed over every hollow place and Bucky’s here, and the skin that never healed is tearing off and burning with potential that could sway either way and—

“Look at me.”

Steve does, automatically. Bucky’s eyes frown a little for him: Steve rarely listened to him, certainly not so quickly. Steve would say he surprises himself, but.

He’s _missed_ this so _much_.

He doesn’t think he’ll be able to live through having to miss it again.

“I just don’t want you to have to see _me_ , like this,” Bucky says softly, cupping Steve’s cheek and brushing a thumb against a few tears that escaped Steve’s lashes, even as Steve starts shaking his head.

“I don’t want to not _see_ you,” Steve almost whimpers, shivering with it all, with the heavy press of _everything_ , the impossible idea of leaving, of losing, of not even being able to watch a chest rise and fall while he waits out an eternity, he can’t—

“Okay.”

Steve’s attention snaps back to Bucky, to the here and now, jaw a little loose. 

“Okay?” Steve repeats, because the universe is tempting him, giving him Bucky still on a string and any more; any _more_ might just take that step too far and that bit too much and lose him _everything_.

But Bucky smiles at him just a little, sad but sure as he leans in and kisses Steve’s lips: soft. They’ve done very little, save hold one another, like neither of them is willing to test this to it’s limits, to dive in if they’re going to lose the promise of a landing, if the floor is going to fall out from below. Steve’s exhale shudders and Bucky breathes against the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, then,” Bucky murmurs, palms broad against Steve’s jawline. “But stay back behind the glass, okay? You gotta be safe, if this doesn’t—”

Bucky stops, shakes his head, and bows his brow against Steve so their breaths mingle.

“You gotta be _safe_.”

“You gotta be _here_ ,” Steve breathes him in, words muffled as he leans closer, tight against Bucky’s cheek. “With _me_.” 

He pulls back only as much as he’s able, which isn’t far. But it’s enough to look at Bucky and clasp Bucky’s shoulders and give the words the absolute necessity they require:

“ _You_ gotta come out of this,” Steve near-hisses: “safe.”

Bucky’s quiet for a second, and Steve focuses on the way his chest bumps Steve’s when they breathe in at the very same time: real.

So _real_.

Then Bucky nods.

“Well then,” Bucky breathes in deep, steadies himself and doesn’t bother to make light, to hide the way he wipes his eyes. “Should I take all the stupid, see if they can nip that outta me too, for the both of us?”

And his smirk, even dimmed, in that moment, is the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Nah,” Steve huffs, a little wet, a little weary but oh, he had _missed_ this. “No, leave it with me.” And it’s a testament to just about everything that Steve manages the hint of a smirk himself.

“I don’t want them to take any of the things that make you _you_ , y’know?”

And Bucky laughs, and it dances through the blood in Steve’s veins as Bucky bumps his nose against the bottom of Steve’s jaw.

“Fuckin’ _punk_ —”

Steve wraps around Bucky’s shoulders and presses his body into Steve’s, desperate for the contact, the heat one more time before they walk into the room beyond, before Bucky lies on that chaise and hopefully comes to no harm, hopefully comes out as himself and nothing less, and nothing more because there _is_ no more than _Bucky_ , not for Steve, not at the end of everything, and Steve needs them to meet the end of this together, so at the end of everything Steve can face it with his heart at his side.

He needs, goddamnit. 

“Don’t worry,” he promises softly, leaning into say it flush against Bucky’s lips. “Give me the stupid for now. I swear I’ll give it back.”

He _needs_.

_______________________

They go back to Steve’s room, when it’s done. And it is done—it happens and it’s over before night falls, less than half a day for the procedure itself for all that it fried Steve’s nerves, for all that it battered Steve’s heart against brittle ribs, for all that it took _time_ and Steve thought he might come apart for it. But after the initial slew of tests—and then some, before Bucky’s convinced he’s safe to leave, for now, with Steve—in the end, it’s the doctor smiling at him, and saying _Captain, did you really think I’d pair my optimism with the prospect of pain?_ as Steve watched, waiting for Bucky to scream, to tremble, to be wrenched apart with every single thing they wrenched _out_ of him, but it never came. In the hours that it took, hell: the pace of Bucky’s _breathing_ barely changed.

“I told you we are very good at what we do,” Ramona tells him, before she sighs, and looks over at Bucky, who’s being checked over by some of the technicians one last time, her gaze a little wistful:

“And in any case,” she says, sagely, “we were only ever looking to take things that never belonged to begin with.”

And Bucky meets Steve’s eyes across the room, and there’s no mistaking what gleams in them as anything but joy, and Steve’s fucking _soul_ leaps for it, sings for it, and Steve can fill in the blanks as to what it means to get rid of things that never belonged.

The things that always did, that always do, that always _will_ can spread their roots and grow all the stronger, all the greater, all the more endless and unbound and, and—

They go back to Steve’s room, and it feels a little too much like a dream. 

They fall onto the mattress, half-exhaustion and half-longing between them, and Steve’s hesitant, bashful all of a sudden for no clear reason. He wants, more than he can speak or breathe, but while Bucky’s eyes are mostly filled with the same wondering disbelief that’s crowding Steve’s chest, they’re shadowed: of course they are. They’re heavy and dark where they always were, but so much deeper: scars etched in so that the grooves cast long, impenetrable.

Maybe.

But Bucky’s looking at him, taking all of him in, and Steve’s pulse stutters as he realizes it, realizes how much he’s been caught in just _staring_ at Bucky, noticing the stretch of his muscles even after all this time, the stasis keeping them sculpted and massive and Steve wants to feel them, wants them wrapped around him, wants them to keep him and never let go; the part of Bucky’s lips as he breathes, the bow of that mouth, the splay of those lashes—

“You look the same,” Steve murmurs, because scars, aches, hurts: this is still Bucky.

This is still _Steve’s_ Bucky. 

“Depends on what you’re comparing it to, babydoll,” Bucky snorts, and the shadows cast harsh, full, but the bite of that sarcasm is so familiar, so warm in the marrow of Steve’s bones even as Bucky glances to where his left arm used to be.

And the gaze is sad, there’s self-loathing that bubbles into the puckered lines of the wounds half-healed in the soul in Bucky’s eyes, but after a moment they shine a little: light gets in.

“God, do you know how that feels?” Bucky looks back up at Steve, scooting up to keep his balance as he moves his weight off his right arm to reach so that he's cupping Steve's cheek and sliding his thumb back and forth over his cheekbone. 

“Being here, being _me_ enough, with you, not like last time, not like,” he shakes his head, closes his eyes so that when they open again, they’re back to keeping that little hint of an ember lit. “Being here, and being me, and calling you that.”

He taps the corner of Steve’s lips where they curl up—where Steve didn’t even _realize_ they’d curled up until Bucky touches the proof, because Steve’d forgotten what it was to smile without meaning to, smile just because; Bucky taps the corner of Steve’s lips, eyes wide. 

“Seeing _this_ , when I say it, when I call you that.”

And Steve doesn’t want that touch to go away, but he can’t help himself but to lean down and latch his mouth to the tantalizing column of Bucky’s throat, just in time to catch the feel of Bucky’s words; Bucky’s soft huff, almost a laugh, a shiver against the pout of Steve’s lips.

“You sound the same,” Steve breathes, and he does; Steve finds himself kissing, nipping along that neck and catching at Bucky’s pulse point and it’s on a whim, on instinct that he just kisses further, further down: lines the bridge of his nose against Bucky’s chest and listens: breath, beat, breath.

“Sounds the same,” he whispers, and Bucky’s lying flat now beneath Steve; his hand comes up to brace on Steve’s back, to hold him against his chest as he breathes, as Steve’s mouth on him drives his heart to play toward racing.

“You taste the same,” Steve says, by the time he’s made his way to swirling a tongue around Bucky’s nipple: still as sensitive as they ever were and that breaks Steve’s world, Steve’s heart wide open and it’s Steve’s imagination, he knows that, but he can pretend that what breaks open is light, because Bucky’s eyes are blown dark and yet still they sparkle; against anything and everything, even now when for every conceivable reason Bucky should be further toward the dark and crawling up, he’s not completely lost inside the shadows.

He wants to believe, with everything he is, that part of the reason for that is because of Steve himself; that part of the reason Bucky can stand on the light spaces amidst all the dark is because Bucky loves him.

Steve knows that's the only reason _he’s_ managed to stand this long, at all.

“Do I pass, then?” Bucky asks, more a jibe than a question, the snark of it thick like honey as Bucky’s pulse hums under Steve’s ministrations, tiny practiced nips around the pebbled skin of each tight bud of Bucky’s nipples—Steve’s mouth remembers like no time has passed, like it’s never learned anything better than _this_.

“Hmm,” Steve buries his face in Bucky’s skin in reply, considering. 

“You smell the same,” Steve breathes in against Bucky’s sternum, nosing up to just beneath his chin, hands roaming across Bucky’s chest, his sides, back and forth like it’ll prove it to his head and to his heart; like it’ll remind the universe that this is Steve’s. _Steve’s_.

And he’s never giving it up; never letting it slip away again.

“Feel the same,” Steve whispers, tracing muscles that are more defined than maybe they’ve ever been, but still the same bones beneath. Still the same _Bucky_ whose breath catches when Steve’s words shiver down the curve of his neck. 

And Steve’s pulse is a hammer, is a racket, inescapable in a void as he pulls away, looks up, and dares to say it, dares to cross a line they can’t come back from and Steve never _wants_ to come back, to go back to being on _this_ side of that line but there’s still a small scared part of him that’s afraid this is wanting, this is hope gone beyond the realm of sense: that this is a dream, and if Steve crosses this line, Steve knows this too deeply to be fooled.

He’s terrified of what happens if it’s not _real_.

But still.

“Fuck the same?” Steve breathes, hopeful and shaking at the very same time. 

“Oh,” Bucky sighs, eyes wide and brightening, like sunrise over the valleys that cast all those shadows: not without the dark places, never without the dark places, but in the other places so goddamn _warm_. 

“Oh, Stevie,” Bucky says, drawing a palm straight down Steve’s chest over his pounding heart, his heaving ribs, and lower, lower:

“Y’know you gotta be thorough.” 

And Bucky’s hand is the same, the exact fucking _same_ on the hard line of Steve’s cock, knows the shape and the curve and where the vein starts to ache when he brushes the pad of a thumb close: that is the same, the same, the same, but—

Bucky leans up, smile almost wolfish now, and his own arousal meets his hand against Steve’s hard length as he nips at Steve’s ear and breathes out:

“Gotta make _sure_.”

_______________________

It’s dark as Steve watches Bucky’s chest rise and fall and rise: same as he’s done for weeks, for months, but different.

So different.

Steve reaches out and touches, and Bucky’s hand comes up to cover his and hold it close, broad and strong and sure.

It wasn’t a _dream_.

_______________________

They’re in bed—which is where they’ve been with regularity since, well, _since_ —when Bucky finally sighs, rolls over, and props himself up on his elbow.

“What’s eatin’ ya, punk?”

Steve blinks away from thoughts that are amorphous and hard to grasp, now, when Bucky’s eyes are on him, and that’s a thing that still hasn’t gotten old.

Won’t ever get old.

“Nothin’.”

Bucky raises a skeptical brow.

“No, really,” Steve shakes his head. “Nothing.” Because after everything, whatever he was thinking on is irrelevant. They’re here.

 _They_ are here.

“They took a fuckton outta here, Stevie,” Bucky taps at his temple; “but the things I know about you? _Those_ are safe and sound, and I damn well know when something’s bugging ya.” His eyes narrow before he adds:

“And I _damn_ well know when you’re lying to me.”

And Steve looks down, because of what little shame he has, most of it’s always been saved up for when he tries to deceive people that he loves with all he has: and Steve remembers what the amorphous thoughts had been circling around. Remembers what the feeling in the pit of his stomach was wrapped up in, where it took him back to and left him wallowing.

Steve swallows hard, because, well.

“It’s stupid.”

“Not surprising.” 

He looks up at that, to Bucky watching him knowingly.

“I mean, hell. You’ve been keeping all the fucking stupid with you for how long now? Probably seeped so deep in your bones that it wouldn’t even matter if you gave it back.”

Steve laughs, and shoves at Bucky’s side.

“Asshole.”

“Is that new? Huh,” Bucky smirks. “Thought we’d got that one settled in the ‘20s. Did I get that wrong?”

And it’s too early to joke about Bucky forgetting, Steve thinks, except that it isn’t. It _is_ , but maybe nothing can be too early anymore, for them, when they’ve waited so long.

Bucky stares at him, patient as fuck in that way Steve’s always hated because he can wait it out, but Bucky’s the only person who can be more stubborn than Steve, and only when it’s _about_ Steve, and has never once failed to wait Steve out.

Sonuvabitch.

“It’s just,” Steve stops, and heaves a deep breath and says it quick because it’s _stupid_ : “your birthday.”

Bucky looks confused for a second before he comes up with a quippy reply.

“I wasn’t even awake, was I,” he shakes his head slowly, pouting a little in exaggerated sympathy. “S’okay you didn’t get me a present, Stevie, not like I mind.”

And yes, they settled that Bucky was an asshole in the ‘20s. Doesn’t mean it’s any less true _now_.

“Hell, what day is it, anyway?” Bucky looks around like there’s going to be a fucking calendar on the wall. “I missed yours, too, didn’t I?”

Steve blinks. Because yeah. Yeah, he did, but Steve hadn’t even thought on it. Steve hadn’t even remembered it himself, so wrapped in the promise of _weeks, now; days, now_ at Bucky’s side. When he thinks on it now, he vaguely remembers the scent of cherries, remembers thinking it odd because they didn’t grow in Wakanda, not the kind that matched the aroma, anyway—it was a new smell, and it’d poked at him, and he remembers that goddamned apple pie in March and knows, like he knows the lines in his palms, that Bucky’s own favorite pie was always cherry. Steve hadn’t been in his own quarters to see the results, and suspects someone misdirected the delivery that he’s thinking was intended—because Bucky, that _fucker_ , of course it was—but it didn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.

They’d both missed it. 

Steve could not possibly give a shit less.

“No, I mean,” Steve shrugs. “I’ll get you presents ‘til the day we die,” he says, like that’s the issue at hand, like that’s the gravity to take in: “but it’s just…”

He trails off, but Bucky follows, dogged about it. As ever.

“Just?” he nudges, not even bothering to aim for subtle.

Steve lets his breath rush out of him and dives in, because yes. 

He’s been keeping the stupid for a really fucking long time, after all.

“It’s 20 _17_ , Bucky.”

He waits for it to sink in.

“Oh.” 

Bucky doesn’t sound particularly fazed, really. Which isn’t fucking _surprising_ because look at them, look at their lives, look at what they’ve known and done and been, so what can _this_ even _matter_ and Steve is _stupid_ , he said so, he—

“What did you want to do, some twisted, overdue over-the-hill surprise party?” Bucky snorts a little, adds with a self-deprecating click of his tongue; “Can’t imagine there’d be much of a turnout to make it worth the effort, babe.”

“Your hundredth though, Buck,” Steve can’t help himself but to push it, to at least say it out loud, pointless and selfish and small as it is in the grander scheme of _everything_. It’s just—

“A _hundred years_ , Bucky,” Steve breathes in sharp, and gravitates just that little bit closer to Bucky’s body, the truth of him, the feel: “That’s, we, this, I—”

Steve feels his throat get tight without permission. He feels his eyes sting, and it was never really about the year, because what were dates on a calendar to the two of them, really; it was never about the _year_.

“You’ve been, it’s been,” Steve tries to make sense of it all, give it something like the words it deserves, demands: the thing that drags and stabs when his blood pumps. “You should have at least been able to celebrate that. That after everything, you’re _here_.”

Bucky just looks at him, studies him like he’s the most fascinating thing in the world, and Steve will never stop feeling baffled and privileged to be the subject of something that strong.

“I am,” Bucky finally says, reaching a hand to rest, palm flat against Steve’s chest. 

“ _We’re_ here,” Steve corrects him, and Bucky smiles softly, nodding and watching Steve with a quiet sort of knowing that used to drive Steve crazy but he’s missed it so much that he revels in it; even in the fact that now, as always, he cannot quite figure it out.

“We are.” 

Bucky just looks at him, and Steve dares to think that maybe Bucky’s as grateful just to _look_ , to be _able_ to look, as Steve is. Bucky just looks at him, level gazed and with something crossed between fondness and longsuffering patience.

Goddamn him, but Bucky even makes _that_ look beautiful.

“You don’t seem,” Steve sighs, but mostly just for show. Mostly just so Bucky’ll say something else, mostly just to listen to Bucky’s voice a little more, a little longer because the heart in his chest does understand that maybe, _maybe_ they’ll have more time.

Maybe _this_ time, they’ll have a lifetime.

“Don’t seem what?” Bucky asks, quirked brow egging Steve on almost without thinking, almost like that’s written in Bucky’s muscle memory deeper than conscious choice.

Steve wants to believe that. Steve wants to believe that _Steve_ lives in Bucky, always has been, deeper than anything else. 

“Upset about it?” Steve ventures, but saying it aloud makes it clear that it’s useless, that his upset is silly compared to everything else, _everything_ else, the things that really mattered, the things that were really worth weighing on the soul.

Not like they don’t have _enough_ of those, jesus, and now Steve’s just trying to add more on getting hung-up over a centennial. Fuck.

“You’re not, bothered, I guess, or, I mean,” Steve fumbles a little more before giving up, shaking his head. 

“I told you it was stupid.”

“It wasn’t,” Bucky says, the quirk of his lips deepening just a little. “Isn’t.” 

He scoots up and puts more of his weight on the headboard of the bed.

“‘Cause just as it’s always been doing,” he says a little sly, a little sad as he pokes Steve soft-like in the chest, left of the sternum:

“That too-big heart of yours almost _asks_ to hurt.”

Steve just looks down, to where Bucky’s fingertip lingers against him, and maybe his lips part a little, maybe it’s a moment where Steve registers, viscerally, the thing that still doesn’t quite resonate as fact: Bucky is touching him.

Bucky is _real_ , and _there_ , with _him_.

“Come here.”

Bucky leans to curl an arm around Steve and draw him closer, sides pressed into each other.

“So first, I want to make sure you know,” Bucky starts, turning onto his left side and looking at Steve as he snakes his hand up Steve’s torso. “that so long as this stays too big and too,” he flattens his palm against the heart in question: “too susceptible to all that hurting? I’m gonna be here to make sure it doesn’t hurt long. Whatever it takes.”

He holds Steve’s gaze until Steve nods; until even after Steve nods: until Steve holds the gaze back long enough and strong enough that Bucky believes he’s been heard; understood.

Believed.

“Second,” Bucky breathes in, hand massaging idly against the beat in Steve’s chest as he bites his lower lip and smiles, all melancholy, as he watches the motion move against Steve’s skin. 

“I don’t think it counts as years lived out when you weren’t _living_ , babydoll.” 

Steve frowns. “But—”

“Forget your asshole ‘friends’ for a second,” Bucky cuts him off, the sad edges of his lips hardening into something closer to a smirk, but not quite there. “Don’t think I don’t know that Natasha calls you a fossil.”

Steve snorts. “Among other things.” Bucky just shakes his head.

“You’re in your fucking _prime_ , Steve. You might stay there for a good long time, too. And how many years were you on ice, huh?”

Steve hesitates, at that.

“I mean, I was—”

“For as many times as they chose to let me loose, and you being thawed out for these past years, let’s call us even, right?” Bucky saves him the discomfort, the thick protest of his blood when he has to think on it all, let alone say it. “For the sake of argument.” 

Steve nods, willing to concede just about anything, like this. To him.

“We’re _maybe_ mid-thirties. At most pushing forty, but I really don’t buy that one,” Bucky muses, hand never leaving Steve’s chest.

“But—”

“Numbers have never owned us, Stevie,” Bucky’s voice is low, and it stops Steve in his tracks, draws his eyes back up to Bucky’s to feel the weight of what they’re saying, what they want him to know. “Tell me that if _I_ remember that, _you_ remember that.”

And Steve does. Steve remembers being told he wouldn’t last the three months of winter, being told he wouldn’t live past 25. Remembers Bucky not understanding how many hours were in a day, if the ones for sleep could be used to earn them rent. Steve remembers Christmas dinner on pittance that looked like a feast. Steve remembers minutes that were lifetimes under Bucky’s body, with his mouth against Bucky’s own. Steve remembers time standing still when they’d said _the 107th_ , when Steve couldn’t tell if Bucky’s chest was rising and falling anymore on that table, when Bucky’s face was the one behind that mask.

What the hell was _time_ , to _them_?

So yeah. Steve remembers.

And Bucky sees it; doesn’t ask for it to be said.

“How about this?” Bucky says, dipping his chin to catch the tip of Steve’s nose and coax him to look up again. “If it makes you feel any better, for me at least, let’s just call this year zero.” He huffs and leans back, moving his hand to Steve’s shoulder to pull him bodily upward and against Bucky’s body, chest to chest. 

“Let’s just call this the impossible thing that it is,” Bucky says, threading his fingers in Steve’s hair as he breathes in deep: “Renewal. Or,” he stops, dances around the word before he gives into it: 

“Rebirth.” And having committing to calling it that feels important. Having committed makes it real, and Bucky doesn’t shy away. 

“This is something entirely new, Steve. This is me, and you, in a way we never dreamed.”

Bucky doesn’t shy away, so neither does Steve. From this, from them: Steve will never want to shy away.

“I,” Steve swallows the tightness in his throat, and just says the only thing that matters: “yes.” 

Because that’s the heart of it. Yes. _Yes_.

“Yes, me too. Year zero.” And Bucky grins, and kisses him hard and fast before leaning his cheek against Steve’s.

“First day of the rest of our lives,” Steve breathes against the shell of Bucky’s ear, hopeful about it, hoping _through_ it: “and I love you like nothing else.”

“Good,” Bucky sighs out, agrees; and Steve feels relief spilling over for something he didn’t realize was there waiting to be let go: “‘cause I love you right back.”

It’s not something new, something Steve doesn’t know, after all. But the fact of hearing it will never stop making his whole body sing.

“Do we turn one next year, then?” Steve asks, a little playful, a little mindless, a little giddy with the increasingly tangible reality that this is true, this is true, this might _stay_.

“We turn whatever we want,” Bucky assures him, just a hint of his old self-assurance in the jut of his jaw, and it’s beautiful, and Steve feels it when his heart pumps a little different, a little stronger for the sight.

“It would probably have to mean I’m not younger than you anymore,” Steve says slyly; “no more bossing me around, lording your advanced wisdom over me.”

“I’m probably gonna regret saying this out loud, but,” Bucky leans his head back and smiles at Steve, unfettered: “If it eases your mind, Stevie? You gotta know. I’d do anything.”

And it’s Steve, this time, who leans down and kisses Bucky, hard and desperate and with everything he’s got.

“I’ve missed you,” Steve gasps, chokes against his mouth, overcome; “so much.”

“Never have to again,” Bucky promises into the parting of Steve’s lips; “So long as I’m breathing, you will never have to again.” And that sounds right. That sounds perfect. That sounds like a thing that doesn’t have a word to describe it or a place to set it, that sounds like a long-earned gift that the universe didn’t have to give and an end that’s a beginning and a future Steve didn’t think he had waiting and so yes. The heart of it is yes.

And _rebirth_ ’s as good a word for it as any.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
